


dawn on the side

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider Ryuki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4296156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miyuki and Yuichi, across three timelines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dawn on the side

I.  
   
The man in the mirror has been watching him for several days now.  
   
At first he believed it to be some kind of vision, but no. Something about the man is oddly _real_ , despite the way he seems to exist in another plane entirely, appearing only on reflective surfaces here and there, studying Miyuki from beneath a mop of dark hair. Almost as if he were… judging. Collecting data. A scientist observing a subject from afar.  
   
On a Tuesday evening he arrives home to find the man standing in his apartment, looking even realer still, all sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones and an aura of desperate sadness.  
   
“What would you do,” he says, “if I told you he could be healed?”  
   
Miyuki stares at him.  
   
“… I’d say you were lying, first of all. I’ve spoken to three doctors and they’ve all told me the same thing.” Miyuki takes a cautious step closer, not quite able to disguise his suspicion. “But then again… You’re not an ordinary person, are you?”  
   
In lieu of an answer, the man takes something from his jacket pocket – something small and rectangular, pink with a golden design.  
   
“Fight,” he says – no, _commands_. “Use this deck and fight as a Rider. The last one standing is granted one wish, no matter how impossible.”  
   
“Rider?” Miyuki echoes. When the man shows no sign of elaborating, he sighs quietly, and instead leans in to inspect the object in the man’s hand, curious despite himself. The symbol decorating it somewhat resembles a stingray. “Well, whatever this is about, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. I’ve never been much for violence.”  
   
“Not even for his sake?”  
   
Miyuki looks up at him sharply.  
   
“He’ll never be the same again,” the man says. “From now on he’ll always be sadder and emptier than he was before. But with this you could give him back his dream. His smile. And you would say no?”  
   
Miyuki falls silent for a long time. He tried, a few days ago, to focus his sight on this person, and saw nothing but darkness and a few broken, incomprehensible images (like looking at a shattered mirror, he thinks). He has more questions than he knows what to do with, and very few answers.  
   
And yet. Wouldn’t he give anything to hear Yuichi play again? For him to be happy again, and for things to go back to how they were before?  
   
Hesitantly, with a tight, wary feeling in his throat, he reaches out to take the deck from the stranger’s outstretched hand.  
   
  
   
  
   
The next time he sees the man from the mirror, they’re in a long hospital corridor, empty except for them.  
   
“You accepted the deck,” he says. “You formed a contract. You agreed to fight.”  
   
“I never agreed to anything,” Miyuki says. “And you conveniently left out the part about murder.” He narrows his eyes. “Why are you doing this? I’ve looked into the future. Mine and all the other Riders I’ve met so far. There’s nothing to be gained for any of us, or for you, either. Only misery.”  
   
Oddly enough, the man nods. “Probably,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter. When this ends I’ll try again, as many times as it takes.”  
   
“Try again?” Miyuki repeats the words slowly, the weight of them settling heavy in the back of his mind. “How?”  
   
But that, it seems, is the extent of questions he’s allowed.  
   
“Fight,” the man says once more, that same voice that Miyuki has been hearing for days now, echoing from all around him. “If you don’t, you will die.”  
   
Miyuki almost laughs. The words “I’ll die either way” are right there on his lips, but the man is already gone, and he bites them back instead, sharp and painful as he swallows them down.  
   
Yuichi turns and smiles when he steps through the door of the physical therapy room. (The man in the mirror was right. That smile just isn’t the same – hollow and perfunctory, only a fraction as bright as it used to be – )  
   
“You didn’t have to come pick me up, you know.”  
   
“I know,” Miyuki says. “I wanted to. How are things going?”  
   
“Oh, watch this,” Yuichi says, and leans over to painstakingly pick up a pencil from the nearby table, teeth clenched and hand trembling as he does so. He holds it up to Miyuki and laughs, though the sound rings false. “Incredible, right?”  
   
Miyuki’s chest hurts.  
   
“Yuichi.”  
   
“Hm?”  
   
“… I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, feeling all of a sudden at a loss. “I’m sorry that I can’t do anything for you.”  
   
Yuichi raises an eyebrow. “What brought this on?” He takes a step closer and reaches up to hold Miyuki’s face in his hands, staring him straight in the eyes with a kind of quiet intensity. “Quit it with that kind of talk. Things are rough right now, but… I keep thinking it’ll all work out, as long as you’re here. So just don’t go anywhere, alright? That’s all you have to do.”  
   
Miyuki hesitates before nodding, covering Yuichi’s injured hand with his own.  
   
(In the mirror behind him there is the shadowy shape of a monster, its yellow eyes glowing, straining against the boundary between this world and the other as it waits to drag him in.)  
   
  
   
  
   
II.  
   
The man with the light-coloured hair falters in front of Miyuki’s table, hesitating, seeming to war with himself. He shakes his head and begins to walk away, but his pace gradually slows to a stop, and he doubles back around, settling into the chair opposite Miyuki with an apprehensive set to his features.  
   
“Should I quit playing music?” he asks.  
   
He leans in a little closer in anticipation, hands folded neatly on the tabletop, and Miyuki can’t help but smile. “I don’t typically deal in ‘should’s,” he says. “This isn’t an advice column, you know.”  
   
This gets a laugh out of the man, faint as it may be. “Fine,” he says. “ _Will_ I quit playing music?”  
   
Miyuki leans back to study him. He looks young – twenty years old, maybe, with deep, dark eyes and a softness about his face. His fingers are long, beautiful, nails cut immaculately down to the quick. A piano player, then? Or something similar. Miyuki “hmm”s thoughtfully; takes a coin from his pocket and gives it a spin as he sets it on the tabletop. Gradually it slows and stops, but instead of falling it simply balances there on its edge, wobbling only a little.  
   
The man stares down at it, wide-eyed.  
   
“Does that usually happen?” he asks.  
   
“Not often, no. But sometimes the future is split between two – or three, or more – equally possible outcomes. In this case I’d say… that it’s all up to you, in the end. Your will, I mean.”  
   
“Well that’s not very helpful,” the man says, raising an eyebrow. “Are you always this vague?”  
   
Miyuki laughs softly. “I get the feeling,” he says, “that you don’t actually want to quit being a musician. Am I correct?”  
   
The man looks at him steadily for a moment before sighing, running a hand through his hair, a tired slump to his shoulders. “Maybe you’re right,” he says. He’s still smiling, though it’s somewhat rueful now. “Things just… haven’t been working out so well lately. Seems like whatever I do isn’t enough. Having a dream is difficult, you know?”  
   
“Like a curse,” Miyuki says. “Or so I’ve heard.”  
   
“A curse?” the man echoes, an edge of wry amusement to his voice. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”  
   
He doesn’t learn the man’s name, in the end.  
   
He goes his way with a nod of thanks despite the ambiguity of his fortune, and it’s not until he’s out of sight that Miyuki realizes he was paid far more than his regular fee. (Something about the money feels hollow all the same.)  
   
  
   
  
   
A half a year later he opens up the newspaper to a headline that reads “Pianist Saito Yuichi missing, presumed dead.”  
   
There’s no mistaking the picture, small and grainy though it might be. What a shame, Miyuki thinks as he skims the article. Missing since approximately Wednesday afternoon. Lights and television still on in his apartment. (Age twenty-four? That’s a shock. Who would have thought he’d be older than Miyuki, with a delicate face like that?) Badly hurt in a vicious assault two months previous and rendered unable to play piano. And now this, too? It’s suspicious, to say the least. Miyuki can’t help but suspect that the two are connected somehow.  
   
He should do something. Investigate, if he can. Perhaps he might be able to see something the police cannot –  
   
His train of thought grinds to a sudden halt, then, as he realizes the words are blurring together on the page. He lifts a hand to touch his cheek and his fingertips come away shiny and wet.  
   
Strange, he thinks.  
   
He wonders why he’s crying.  
   
  
   
  
   
III.  
   
There’s a trail of crumpled-up pieces of paper lining the hallway. Miyuki picks one up; smoothes it out and stares down at the rows of hastily scribbled music notes, with comments in the margins saying things like “change to B flat?” and “this is awful!!” He follows the trail into the bedroom, where Yuichi is sitting on the floor with his keyboard in his lap, surrounded by even more rejected sheet music. He notices Miyuki standing in the doorway and motions him closer, a slightly manic gleam in his eye.  
   
“Tell me if this sounds alright,” he says, and plays a brief piece – simple, but with an underlying elegance to it. Before Miyuki can answer he’s already muttering “no, no” to himself, ripping the sheet out of his notebook and tossing it aside.  
   
“How long have you been at this?” Miyuki asks, raising an eyebrow.  
   
Yuichi meets his eyes and seems to come back to himself, then, slumping back against the wall and massaging his temples. “A while,” he says with a tired laugh. “Who would’ve thought composing something after a year of nothing would be so difficult?”  
   
Miyuki crouches down next to him, reaching out to brush his bangs back, revealing somewhat bloodshot eyes. He keeps his hand there for a moment, and Yuichi seems to lean into the touch.  
   
“You should take a rest,” Miyuki says. “You’re going to get sick from stress if you keep this up.”  
   
“Oh? Advice from Mr. Never Been Stressed A Day In His Life?” Yuichi’s mouth curves into an amused smile. “Don’t worry. I’m set to crash soon enough. Just… maybe one more…”  
   
He frowns down at his notebook, flipping to a new page, and that is when Miyuki notices it.  
   
“Your ring,” he says.  
   
Yuichi winces. “Ah. Yeah. That’s… I went to put it on this morning and it just wasn’t there? But I definitely didn’t lose it. Definitely not. Probably just fell underneath something, or – ”  
   
He breaks off suddenly, staring at Miyuki’s hand. Miyuki glances down as well to find Yuichi’s ring right there on his ring finger, his own silver ring relegated to his index finger. He lifts his hand up to the light and blinks at it, perplexed.  
   
“Miyuki,” Yuichi says, with mock seriousness. “Are you going senile on me? At this age?”  
   
“I’m… not sure how that happened. I certainly don’t remember putting it on. I must have just done it without thinking?” He shakes his head as if trying to clear his confusion, tugging the ring off his finger. (It’s a little too small for him. How _did_ he put it on without noticing?) “Here, hold out your hand.”  
   
Yuichi does as asked, and when he slides it on to his finger it feels like a weight has abruptly been lifted from his shoulders. All day long there has been a nagging sense in the back his mind of something being _wrong_ , something out of place, a vague, muddled sadness he can’t explain. Perhaps this was the cause of it.  
   
He holds Yuichi’s hand in his own absently, running a thumb along his knuckles, along the arch between his fingers, and Yuichi gives him a bemused look.  
   
“You seem pretty off today, too,” he says. “Something wrong?”  
   
For a moment Miyuki is quiet.  
   
“No,” he says finally, and finds himself smiling for the first time that day. “Nothing at all.”


End file.
